Monday, January 21, 2008

Another day and yet another questionable call regarding race. This one seems like another "not a big deal" case, but the NY Post and Phil Mushnick doesn't seem to think so. The announcer in question is SNY Sports Nite anchor, Kirk Gimenez and he had this to say about (pictured right) West Virginia Forward Joe Alexander....

SNY "Sports Nite" anchor, Kirk Gimenez, a former ESPNews anchor, Thursday night was trying to be extra slick when, over clips of St. John's-West Virginia, he said, "[WVU's] Joe Alexander going baseline, and the white boy puts it in, reverse."

While Gimenez, like Tilghman, sounded as if he were trying (too hard) to be cute as opposed to hateful, he apparently has a poor sense of current events as they relate to sportscasters and race.

SNY says Gimenez has been scolded about such cracks, but one shudders to think what would have happened to his career - and who would have led the charge (with the news media's full cooperation) - had the racial/ethnic components of both reporter and player been different.

I know this isn't a big deal at all, but why doesn't everyone just stop bringing up race all together? Nothing good will come of it if you try to be funny, cute, or hateful so why bother??? Someone's going to get pissed about something whether it's the athlete, another writer, or people who think this world is too PC.

Well I didn't think this would be how St. John's first got a mention on Awful Announcing but usually the coverage on SNY is better than USPNU or MSG. I was out at a bar in Manhattan so I didn't hear the commentary first hand. Mason Jr. made the top 10 on ESPN for a thunderous dunk he had in the beginning of the game and it appeared Alexander wanted to answer back he took it to the rim hard a lot trying to dunk over guys mostly unsuccessful. He got a technical for taunting Justin Burrell after knocking him over. Perhaps all of this played into his foolish comment, I don't know. I personally don't think the comment is that big of a deal however I agree why do we have to bring it up at all?